Earlier this week, the Seattle City Council passed the new Urban Forestry Stewardship Plan. The goal of the plan is "to increase the health of the urban forest and to meet Seattle's goal of 30% canopy tree coverage by 2037." SvR's Peg Staeheli served on the Urban Forestry Commission.
We thought this might be a good opportunity to clear out some of the recent articles we've come across relating to the urban nature. Enjoy!
- File this under good messages in unexpected places: uber-design periodical Metropolis gives it's considerable audience a primer on soil.
- Penn State Horticultural Extension writer Diane Oleson reviews some of the ways that trees and gardens can be used to manage stormwater.
- On the Landscape Architect's Network, Ashley Penn pens the Street Tree Survival Guide.
- Also on Landscape Architect's Network, writer Oana Anghelache discusses the many psychological benefits of plants.
- Grist reports on recent findings reported in the journal Environmental Pollution and concludes that "trees save at least a life a year in each of 10 major U.S. cities."
- Yale Environment 360 goes in depth with botanist Peter Crane to discuss gingkos, "the oldest tree on earth."
- Conservation magazine documents the many ways researchers and innovators continue to learn from leaves. From climate change to engineering, leaves are inspiring new innovations.
- The ASLA released a beautiful website this week that documents the connections between human health and nature.
- Scientific American, Fast Company and Atlantic Cities all picked up a fascinating study that was published in Psychological Science. In the study, the scientists found "a clear relationship between the amount of local green space, mental distress, and life satisfaction. Specifically, the more green space, the higher the overall life satisfaction and the lower the mental distress. (And yes, they did control for all the things you’d expect: the income, employment, education, and local crime rates of each area, as well as the age, marital status, health, income, education, employment status, residence type and household space, and commute length of the individual participants.)"
- Finally, Brice wrote a piece for the current Seattle Parks Foundation newsletter about the future of parks. You can find it on page three, here.